behind AotW

a companion to Antietam on the Web

Year: 2020

  • Quebec Schoolhouse: a desperate little cavalry battle

    I should be doing something else, but got pulled off track by a trooper of the 3rd Indiana Cavalry, James Williamson, who was killed in a little-known cavalry skirmish at the Quebec Schoolhouse near Middletown, MD on 13 September 1862.

    His regiment’s historian, former Corporal William N. Pickerill wrote a fascinating account of that ‘desperate little cavalry battle’ for a newspaper in 1897, and put it in his regimental History in 1906. Because of him, I’ve spent the last couple of days putting names and faces with some of the men who were there.

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  • Surg Abner Hard

    Surgeon Abner Hard of the 8th Illinois Cavalry treated sick and wounded soldiers along the Army’s march from Washington to Sharpsburg. After Antietam he and his Assistant Surgeon Stull manned a hospital at Keedysville, MD. In 1868 he wrote and published the History of the Eighth Cavalry Regiment, Illinois Volunteers, which is where this etching of him (from a photograph) may be found.

  • Capt Gilbert J Wright

    Captain “Gib” Wright led Company D of Cobb’s Legion Cavalry Battalion and was wounded in action at Quebec Schoolhouse near Middletown, MD on 13 September 1862. He commanded a brigade by the end of the war and may have been appointed Brigadier General in January 1865. His photograph is in the collection of the Georgia Historical Society, and is online from fold3.

  • 3rd Indiana Cavalry marker

    While looking into the cavalry action at Quebec Schoolhouse (near Middletown, MD 13 Sept 1862) and some men of the regiment, I noticed this plaque for the 3rd Indiana Cavalry on their monument on the Antietam Battlefield.

    I’m sure this is news only to me, but it turns out that half of the regiment – the East “wing” or battalion – was with the Army of the Potomac and at Antietam. It consisted of Companies A through F and was commanded by Major George Chapman.

    The West wing (Cos. G,H, I, & K) was in the Army of the Ohio and was in the vicinity of Perryville, KY in the fall of 1862, then under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Buchanan.

    I think Major Chapman’s name should have been on that monument instead of Colonel Buchanan’s. What do you think?

     

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    The 3rd Indiana Cavalry monument is online from the Antietam National Battlefield Park.

    The 1863-64 photograph of (then) Colonel Chapman is from the Library of Congress.

  • Austin Martin, Jr.

    Private Austin Martin, Jr. of the 8th Illinois Cavalry was mortally wounded in action somewhere in Maryland in September and died of his wounds on 14 October 1862 in a hospital in Frederick. He’s buried in Antietam National Cemetery. His photograph was contributed to his Findagrave memorial by Bruce Weirauch.